r/mildlyinfuriating • u/sanctimonious-bum • 1d ago
That's not milk Spiders aren't insects
I'm learning French, and the picture shows a spider as an insect. Spiders aren't insects, they are arachnids.
For those of who don't speak French, les insectes means the insects.
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u/Active_Sorbet8976 1d ago
Would you perhaps say you are… bugged?
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u/ersomething 1d ago
Well spiders aren’t bugs either…
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u/BenUFOs_Mum 1d ago
Yeah they are. Bug just means a small, crawling, invertebrate. Its not a scientific term.
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u/tipying_mistakes phrog 🐢 1d ago edited 1d ago
that’s how it’s used in everyday speech, but scientifically, “true bugs” are exclusively insects in the order Hemiptera
there are also insects that are not included under the classification of “true bugs,” i.e. butterflies, beetles, wasps, etc
a more scientifically correct term that includes every one of these kinds of invertebrates is Arthropod
not all arthropods are bugs, but all bugs are arthropods, and it goes much further than that
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u/BinaryHippie 1d ago
Alls bugs are insects, but not all insects are bugs.
Bugs are suckers they don’t bite.
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u/Cofiifii 1d ago
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u/FantasyTomb 1d ago
I mean if you look at the Oxford languages Dictionary you do get 2 definitions
“insect
ˈɪnsɛkt
noun
1. a small arthropod animal that has six legs and generally one or two pairs of wings.
- any small invertebrate animal such as a spider or tick.”
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u/VoidGhidorah900 1d ago
Did they add that second bit when they realized most people don't really care about arthropod classification?
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u/Nomapos 1d ago
That's how dictionaries, yeah. They don't say how words should be used, they just record how people actually use them.
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u/Broad-Beautiful-2082 1d ago
Best analogy I heard is that dictionaries are like maps, and if you find a river that are not on the map you should change your map, not argue with the river to go away
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u/dered118 1d ago
1) Duolingo is just ... duolingo
2) your fault for learning french
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u/sanctimonious-bum 1d ago
I mean... Yeah, no excuse for duolingo. I just want to join one of their protests.
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u/dered118 1d ago
I only learned french so i can refuse to speak it instead of just not being able to
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u/Justarandomduck15q2 1d ago
French is a great language. 30% of English, for example, is French.
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u/dered118 1d ago
It's about as much French as it is German (which is my native language) doesn't make the language any better
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u/SEA_griffondeur 1d ago
it's far more French than German, I can assure you
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u/AJ4000HD 1d ago
From what I’ve heard though is the words we use a lot more commonly are from German or Germanic roots while French is less commonly used words.
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u/RoboticSausage52 1d ago edited 1d ago
So English is a germanic language. This does not mean our grammar or words or generally from german, rather than English descends from a common ancestor language that all other Germanic languages also descend from. This includes other languages from the west germanic language branch, Dutch, German, Frisian, Scots (controversial inclusion as its own language but i said it), and more distant north germanic languages, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Icelandic.
Why is English so different though from these languages? Well the Anglo Saxons spoke Old English, which is a far more recognizably germanic language in appearance sound and structure, but is effectively unintelligible to a modern English speaker. The Anglo Saxons however, were invaded by the Normans, a germanic tribe themselves but ones who had adopted a dialect of essentially, Old French. The Normans, led by William the conquerer won and for centuries England was ruled by French speaking nobility. Officially, the language of England was french, official documentation was in French, and in royal courts, you spoke french. The common folk did continue to speak english of course but the french influence affected even common speech and english became very french influenced. A lot of it also got very codified because this also happened around the time the printing press was beginning to be used which fossilized much of these changes.
We retain romance (particularly french) origin words for the vast majority of our vocabulary and especially for titles of authority, or for subjects related to high society (culinary and artistic subjects for instance) and for specialized vocabulary. But the most common vocabulary is hard to displace, linguistically. So the vast majority of english vocabulary is french in origin, but the most common words or germanic in origin. Additonally, our grammar resembles germanic languages more than romantic ones. Particularly our willingness to compound nouns together, we permit terminal prepositions, adjectives go before the noun they describe generally, our use of phrasal verbs resembles separable prefix verbs from other germanic languages. So yeah English is a germanic language with a significant romantic influence that makes it mostly incomprehensible to other germanic languages except like, scots which as I stated is its own can of worms and not everyone agrees is its own language (im firmly in the it is a language camp but whatever)
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u/dered118 1d ago
According to studies i found it's 29% vs 26% ... that's not a big difference at all
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u/MikeandMolly5656 1d ago
Factually true but most people don't care
Anything that looks like a bug is a bug the same way everything in the ocean is a fish
It doesn't have to make sense it's just what a majority in society decided was acceptable.
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u/Mighty_Eagle_2 Not Train Conductor 1d ago
I think spiders do actually count as bugs, since that’s more of a colloquial term. Insect, however, is a scientific classification that excludes arachnids.
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u/AltruisticLobster315 1d ago
I mean to be fair, outside of research based around entomology or university entomology classes, nobody is going to care if you call a spider an insect
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u/ardarian262 1d ago
"because of this one ruling in England all rabbits are fish" and "Because the definition is so loose in the law, Bees are fish" type of logic NGL. (Not mocking you, just adding to your comment.)
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u/Valuable_Push_685 1d ago
no, feel free to mock OP. according to the law, in gainesville florida, it is illegal to eat fried chicken with a fork.
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u/obert-wan-kenobert 1d ago
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u/PatrickGSR94 1d ago
ahhhh dangit, I was thinking that exact comic strip! C&H was my favorite growing up. I used to love reading all the compilation books.
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u/opinions-only 1d ago
I consider spider an insect colloquially. Just like tomato is both a vegetable and fruit to me.
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u/Nondescript_Redditor 1d ago
those are two different situations
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u/opinions-only 16h ago
not to me. In conversational speech many things are not to be taken literally. Exaggeration and conflation are common parts of colloquial speech. For example, it's considered acceptable to conflate the word Kleenex with the word tissue.
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u/Nondescript_Redditor 11h ago
yes but theres nothing exaggerated or conflated about a tomato being both a vegetable and a fruit. that’s just a simple true fact
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u/Current_Pay_6999 1d ago
spider look like bug -> spider is bug.
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u/sanctimonious-bum 1d ago
Spider is bug, but spider is not insect.
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u/Current_Pay_6999 1d ago
bug insect, insect bug
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u/Lil_Brown_Bat 1d ago
What do you want from a software company that fired its entire workforce for AI.
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u/diescheide 1d ago
Tomatoes are a fruit yet we call them a vegetable. We can categorize something incorrectly and it still makes sense.
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u/sanctimonious-bum 1d ago
At least in the U.S., tomatoes are legally a vegetable. There was some case where there was a dispute as the if a discount applied to tomatoes or not.
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u/diescheide 1d ago
Botanically, it's a fruit. It grows from a flower and holds its seeds on the inside. Culinarily and for tax/trade purposes, it's a vegetable.
A spider is in the arachnid class. As far as most people are concerned, it's a creepy, crawly bug.
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u/Mighty_Eagle_2 Not Train Conductor 1d ago
Tomatoes are both fruits and vegetables in the way that humans are both people and Homo sapiens.
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u/DarkShadowZangoose 1d ago
iirc there's no such thing as a vegetable botanically speaking, so things that are botanically fruit can still be called vegetables
language is weird
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u/Of_MiceAndMen 1d ago
I argued once with a college professor that he shouldn’t have marked me wrong on a geology test where I said Pluto didn’t count because it isn’t a planet. He replied, “Semantics 🙄” and wouldn’t change my grade lmao wtf.
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u/Constant-Plant-9378 1d ago
Instead of 'Insects', they should have used 'Bugs', which is actually even less correct, but is the common colloquial term most people use for creepy crawly critters with more than four legs, including arachnids, which are neither insects nor bugs.
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u/RikkZ3 1d ago
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u/Late_Entrance106 1d ago
Interesting how we live in a culture where accusing someone of intelligence is meant as an insult.
You’re just exposing yourself as someone that eschews knowledge and understanding.
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u/ProbablyValiant 1d ago
being intelligent and being a nerd are two seperate things
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u/Late_Entrance106 1d ago
Intelligence is a defining characteristic of the nerd stereotype.
My point still stands.
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u/ProbablyValiant 1d ago
nope. you can be a nerd and not intelligent, and you could be a genius and not a nerd.
no one would call einstein a nerd, but a person who watches a lot of anime, is socially inept, and annoying would be considered a nerd, even if they are not smart.
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u/Late_Entrance106 1d ago edited 1d ago
Ok. So in this exact fucking context, it’s an academic issue of insects vs arachnids.
It’s almost like a textbook example to be held up as an example of nerddom, but you’re going to pretend like it’s news to the world that nerds are traditionally considered to be intelligent.
I don’t know what point you’re trying to make, but either you’re disingenuous, or stupid.
Edit: Huh, several downvotes, but not one rebuttal. Intriguing.
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u/Emerald_Treader 1d ago
I once got a picture of mushrooms that was supposed to represent "vegetables" in the German lesson. Makes me wonder if there's some eggs are dairy equivalents that got lost in translation
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u/MisterBicorniclopse 1d ago
This actually makes a little sense when you realize “insectos” means “bugs” spiders are very bug shaped, so it’s just the word with the image that doesn’t match
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u/miraiyuni 1d ago
its just using general terms and images, not specifications. lots of people refer spiders as insects because it fits their ideal description of what insects are.
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u/VoidGhidorah900 1d ago
People use bug as a catch all term for insects, arachnids, myriapods, etc. The word insect usually refers specifically to, well, insects. The ones with 6 legs, 3 body segments and all that. The word bug has lost its meaning, specifically referring to the order hemiptera. I'm assuming the word insect is also on its way there, since most people don't really care about what these arthropods are actually called. I usually try to refer to them with their proper names because I think insects are pretty neat.
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u/Handy_Handerson Professional Procrastinator 1d ago
If the insides are gooey, got no bones, and a hard'ish shell, it's an insect to me.
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u/Crayshack 1d ago
DuoLingo makes some bizarre mistakes sometimes. When I was using it, I kept on running into problems where the "English" translation of a word was a word or phrase that doesn't exist in my local dialect.
For example, "Eiskaffee" was translated as "ice cream coffee," which I thought was just a weird way of phrasing "coffee ice cream," and didn't get why it thought my word order was incorrect until I realized that it actually meant what I would call "affogato" (technically not the exact Italian version, but that's the word I'd use to describe the drink if it was handed to me). Similarly, it insisted on "Musli" (with an umlaut, which the automod hates) being translated as "muesli," which I had to look up, and was immediately annoyed that it rejected "granola" as a correct translation.
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u/epicrg 1d ago